The invention concerns an air filter housing and an air filter for the air intake conduit of an internal combustion engine of a motor vehicle, comprising a housing pot with a receiving opening for insertion of an air filter element, provided with a circumferentially extending elastomeric radial sealing element, into the housing pot and further comprising a housing cover that can be placed along a mounting axis onto the housing pot. The receiving opening of the housing pot is circumferentially delimited by a free rim section of a housing wall of the housing pot; the radial sealing element of the filter element inserted into the housing pot is extending past the free rim section in outward direction in order to seal the housing cover and the housing pot relative to each other.
Air filters for the air intake conduit of an internal combustion engine are used in particular in motor vehicles in order to filter from the air carbon-particulate matter, pollen, particulates, and other particles contained in the ambient air so that these particles cannot reach the combustion chamber of the motor. A premature wear and damages, for example, due to scratch formation on the pistons or defects of electronic components, can be avoided by an effective filtration of the intake air.
According to one type of construction, the employed air filters comprise an air filter housing of the aforementioned kind. For assembling the air filter, the air filter element in practice is usually inserted by hand into the housing pot of the air filter until the air filter element contacts by means of the circumferentially extending radial sealing element the free rim of the housing wall of the housing pot. The housing cover is subsequently placed onto the housing pot, in general assisted by automation.
In this context, due to the short cycle times required by cost considerations, the housing cover is moved at high movement speed along the mounting axis relative to the housing pot. The radial sealing element or its sealing lip has with regard to the opening cross-section of the housing cover an intended relative oversize in order to sealingly rest in the assembled position on the housing cover as well as on the free rim section of the housing pot with sufficiently great contact pressure. When placing the housing cover onto the housing pot, the sealing lip of the radial sealing element is therefore often excessively greatly deformed by the housing cover in axial direction. The radial sealing element may become damaged thereby. The sealing lip, for example, can tear or become notched by the free rim section of the housing wall of the housing pot. This risk exists in particular in case of a polygonal shape of the air filter housing and thus of the receiving opening of the housing pot as well as of the correspondingly configured radial sealing element. In practice, the use of lubricants, by means of which the friction resistance or gliding resistance between the housing cover and the sealing lip can be reduced, has been found to be too complex and too expensive, not least because of the required chemically inert properties of the lubricant.
Object of the invention is therefore to provide an air filter housing of the aforementioned kind as well as an air filter in which the risk of excessive loading of the radial sealing element of the air filter element at the time of placing the housing cover onto the housing pot can be reduced in an inexpensive and reliable way.